


want & need

by crossingwinter



Series: Star Wars Drabbles & Ficlets [11]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-21
Updated: 2018-04-21
Packaged: 2019-04-25 20:45:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,245
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14386788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crossingwinter/pseuds/crossingwinter
Summary: he needs her; she needs him too.





	want & need

**Author's Note:**

> sometimes you just gotta saturday morning emo smut it out. per usual with this series, this one is unbeta'd.

ben comes to bed, stripping off his shirt--he gets too hot when he sleeps--and curls himself around her, pulling her to his chest. he presses his nose to her neck, and the rise and fall of his chest against her back, the steady patter of his heart, lulls her to sleep in moments.

* * *

 

the first night that he’s with them, the whole building shakes.  

“he always--always used to get nightmares,” leia says, her throat dry as she passes rey to make her way into the room they’ve given her son.  rey hovers behind her, her head throbbing, the flickering of the dim lamps too bright for her eyes.  

“sweetheart,” leia whispers as she bends down over ben.  for someone who is making the whole base shake in his dreams, he is remarkably still.  he is lying on his stomach, his face pressed into the mattress and there is a crease between his brows.  “sweetheart, it’s a dream.”

he jerks awake and the building goes still and rey’s head immediately stops hurting.  he blinks, his gaze on his mother.  there is a shine of sweat to his forehead as though he has been running, as though he has been fighting, and he is breathing heavily.  

then he closes his eyes again, groans, and turns his face into the pillow again.

* * *

 

rey loves the heat of him.

she’s always been cold in her sleep--the jakku heat escaping into the night and replacing the planet with a frigid cold that one had best prepare oneself for.  space had only been marginally better, and ahch-to had been cold in an unsettling damp sort of way.

ben curled around her warms her.  his arms around her make her feel safe, make her feel wanted.  she knows he needs her.

when she’s there, the nightmares go away.

* * *

 

the base is shaking again and leia organa is offworld.  

this time, it is rey who pushes open the door to ben’s room and clambers onto the bed next to him.  she presses her hand to his cheek and immediately the shakes stop, though he is still asleep.   

“ben?” she whispers, unsure.

he does not wake.  

she sits there for a long while, her hand on his cheek, watching as the sweat fades, as his eyes rolling under closed lids slow.  she wonders what torments him so in his sleep.

she falls asleep next to him and when she wakes it is to find him watching her, a look of curiosity on his face.  

“you were dreaming again,” she whispers.

“i know.”

of course he does.  she gets the impression that ben remembers everything.  that’s why he’s always walking around like a wounded beast, with scars that only she can even begin to understand.

carefully, she takes his hand, her fingers slipping between each of his--all the better to grip him with.

this time, they are not interrupted.

this time, she will not let him go.

* * *

 

some nights, rey jerks awake, lashing out.  her dreams make her forget that the arms around her are ben’s, that the body pressing against hers is a loving one and not a tormenter, pushing his way into her at-at.  

she never remembers the dreams that make her wake so violently, but rey rarely remembers her dreams anyway.  usually, when she does, they are practically hallucinatory--bright colors, odd shapes, and stories that make no sense at all.

sometimes, she thinks she hears a familiar voice, a loving brush to her cheek that leaves her heart feeling oddly empty when she remembers that the voice is not ben’s and thus can only be...

she’ll turn around in his arms, burying her face into his chest, squeezing her eyes shut because she will not cry over them she will not cry over them she is here, loved, and protected, and wanted and she will not cry over them.

she is glad, then, that ben needs her.

she needs him too.

* * *

 

“i can only imagine the sex is great.  have you seen them spar?” rey overhears it in the mess, but doesn’t think anything of it until,

“aren’t dark-side users all about emotions anyway?  i bet it’s intense.”

she freezes.   _search your feelings._

she knows--just knows--that they are talking about her and ben.

they haven’t even kissed.  

but of course the whole base assumes that they have--that they’ve done far more than kiss.  she’s been sleeping in his bed for months.  

she thinks of little intimacies: brushing her fingers over his, gazes that trail the other’s movements, the way he’ll lean a little closer as if to brush his nose through her hair before remembering that they are not alone ( _you’re not alone,_ he’d told her, and she feels that most of all when they are alone together, curled up in one another’s arms).  

she thinks of mornings where she’s woken up with him hard at her back, and his face buried in the crook of her neck.  she thinks of shifting her hips at night and being aware that the slit between her legs is damper than usual.  she thinks of how he never kisses her, but how he’ll hold her like she’s the only thing keeping him steady in the galaxy.

and she imagines the feel of his lips against hers, soft and gentle, or perhaps bruising and needy.  she imagines the feel of his hands on her chest--she’s rested hers on his, after all--and she feels that dampness--that familiar dampness--once again.

 _sex...it wasn’t what we needed,_ she thinks almost in a daze.  they’d needed to hold one another, needed to need one another, needed to want one another--but to want in that way hadn’t been the sort of wanting she’d thought of, not when finally there were arms there to just hold her.

* * *

 

he strips off his shirt as he climbs into bed, and rey watches him from the doorway to the fresher.  he does not wait for her--he knows she’ll be there soon.

she takes a deep breath and his eyes flick to her and he frowns slightly.  she crosses to the bed clambers onto it on her knees and bends her head over his, her heart in her throat as she brushes her lips to his.

he stops breathing and she pulls away.  she isn’t frightened, she knows she will never lose him, but if this isn’t what he wants, if this is not what he needs, then she doesn’t want it either.

his hand is in her hair and he is dragging her face back to his and it is like a dam has broken.  rey has never seen a dam break, but she feels everything in ben’s heart all of a sudden, washing over her, enough to drown her were she not firmly aware of his lips against hers, his arms tightening around her, never letting her go, never letting her drown.  he needs her too much to let her drown in him.

his breath is fresh from the toothpaste he’d just used, and it is hot in her mouth.  she will taste the same to him, she is sure, and that makes her heart lurch.   _it is the same for us,_ she realizes.  everything is the same.  

she breaks the kiss long enough to strip her tunic of from over her head but before she can bring her lips down to his again, his face is buried between her breasts, his fingers brushing up and down her spine as he kisses along her sternum, his nose nudging into the soft tissue to the side.  she grabs his hair, tugs it, guiding his head across her chest to a nipple until he’s sucking on it and she lets out a growl, low in her throat, her hands moving to cup his face.  

the moment she does, though, his lips release her.  he looks up at her, his eyes bright.  “you want this?” he asks her, his voice higher than usual.

“i want you,” she whispers in return.  “i always have.  i always will.”

how is it that they had not kissed before?  why had she been denying herself the feeling of his lips against hers?  why hadn’t she realized that she could breathe him in if she wanted?  was it that she was not used to wanting?  or that she was still growing used to being wanted?

his hands are on her breasts now, thumbs brushing across her stiffening nipples  she wraps her arms around his neck, as if she can pull him closer to her, pull him inside her so that she’ll never have to be apart from him ever again.  with a giddy laugh, she realizes that she can’t do that--at least, not completely.

ben freezes again, looking up at her, unsure where the laugh came from.  he tries to pull his mouth from hers but her lips chase his, her nose rubs along his and with a quiet noise, she pushes him back onto the bed and straddles him.  she’s known him hard before, felt him pressed into the small of her back, but never between her legs.  she’d been denying herself that too, and it sends shivers across her skin as she begins to rub her slit through her pants against him in his. 

ben’s hands leave her breasts.  he tugs at the waistline of her pants, pulling them down her thighs, then holding her steady while he pulls one of her legs out.  he does not bother with the other because rey has reached down between them, pulled him out of his own and the moment her hand had wrapped around him he’d let out a gutteral moan and she felt large fingers running up and down her slit, setting her to trembling.   

she doesn’t know what she’s doing, doesn’t know how to make this happen.  she spends a good minute trying to sink onto him, but her own nerves have her too tight for it and it’s not until ben, with a kiss, with a gaze so deep she forgets she even has a body for a moment, slips a finger in her that she realizes that her whole body is tense.  

she closes her eyes.  his finger inside her is not what she’d expected it to feel like.  she didn’t know what she’d expected.  holos and stories make it seem like it’s immediate bliss to have something inside you.  instead she just feels aware of her insides, and gasps when he adds a second finger.  she’s wet, and he’s stretching her, but it’s not an unpleasant stretch.  he pumps them a few times--awkwardly, she thinks, though she has no way of knowing--before pulling them out again and this time, when she takes a deep breath, when she positions herself over him again, when she sinks onto him, the stretch is even better.

but the stretch is nothing on the visions.

she’d thought that when they’d first touched hands, that had been it, the only glimpse of a destiny denied her.  but as she stares into ben’s eyes, she sees the only thing she’s ever wanted in there, a future buried so deep in her soul she hadn’t known it was what she wanted until this very moment, hadn’t thought it could be until their bodies--like their souls--were one.

there is a steady stream of tears dripping from ben’s eyes as she begins to move.  she can feel his labored breathing--not from pleasure--but from _want_  as she clings to him.  “ben,” she hears herself say, her voice thick, but before she knows what to say next he’s kissing her again, kissing her and _dark rises and light to meet it_ his hips jerk up into hers, pushing himself deeper, and she hadn’t felt empty, she didn’t think she’d felt empty--not anymore.  but her body had needed him as her heart and soul had.  her arms had had him, her chest, her face, but her hips?  her slit?  the parts of her that could be anyone’s and no one’s that she’d brought ben into?

she knows her hands are somewhere on his body, knows her lips are pressed against his skin.  she can hear his gasping as he tries to stop crying but he seems unequal to that task and does his best to carry on despite his tears.  she is aware of all of this, but not aware of anything near so much as the fire spreading through her, growing in the pit of her stomach until she is clinging to him so as not to lose herself the way her body his trembling and burning and living.

focus returns.

her hands are on his face now, and she is kissing her way along the scar she’d sliced there.  she is kissing away his tears.  her hips move more slowly now--her skin sensitive.  holds him as close as she can, whispering in his ear that she loves him--a thought she’s never had, never allowed herself, for all her want and need.  

and he floods her with a different kind of heat, a different burning as his arms tighten around her, as his teeth press lightly into her skin so that she can muffle his groan.  he falls back onto the bed, pulling her with him.

“i love you too,” he tells her.  

and that--that is better than being wanted or being needed.


End file.
